


give me somebody to break my heart

by artemis (artemisandapolla9328)



Series: love is the most powerful magic [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Beauxbatons, F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-23 07:53:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23008192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artemisandapolla9328/pseuds/artemis
Summary: It was barely spring outside—the grass was still tinged with winter brown, but it was warm enough to venture out without warming charms or robes, for which Caro was glad. She tilted her head toward the sky, and took a deep breath in. “It will smell all of flowers soon,” she murmured, and Yvonne let a shriek of laughter out. “What?”“You are such a romantic. Even now, when a boy has left you absolutely heartbroken, you think about flowers and such.”---The wizarding world is a big and beautiful place, and there are stories of love all around us.
Relationships: Original Character(s)/Original Character(s)
Series: love is the most powerful magic [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1653571





	1. cut all the flowers, but still, spring will come

**Author's Note:**

> outtakes from thinking about Beauxbatons from a roleplay thread that never took off.

Yvonne had yanked her out of her bathtub—Yvonne was just the kind not to care that Caro was entirely naked, because she wasn’t about to let her best friend drown her sorrows in a bathtub no matter how much Caro wanted to do precisely that. 

“Yvonne! Get out of here!”

“No. You are moping!“

She was. Galen had sent her an owl to say that he officially wanted to break up with her, even though Easter was just a few weeks away and he was supposed to come and visit her at her family home. It was supposed to make being home _bearable_ , instead of absolutely insufferable. 

Galen was supposed to make just about everything bearable. 

“So? Why do you care, Yvonne? Go to Soleil without me—I’m sure Emmanuel would be happy to suck face with you tonight, like every night.“

It was catty to say, and she could see Yvonne balk for a moment before shaking it off.

“I don’t care if you’re a bitch, Caro. You’re my friend, and Galen wasn’t good enough for you anyways.”

She felt like Galen was the only person that meant anything to her, and frankly, she was content to sit in the warm pool of bubbles for the rest of eternity if she never had to face anyone again.

“You know, if you stay there, these bubbles are eventually going to melt away and it’ll just be my ugly naked body on display.”

“Don’t be stupid. I don’t have to be one of Vénus's sapphic lesbian to know that your body’s just fine, and Galen Weltner is an idiot. Now come on, there’s a party tonight and rumour has it that Bertie is going to bring his guitar. I know you’ve always loved that silly song he sings—you know the one, la laaaaaa laaa.”

Caro put one wet hand over her ear, and waved the other at her friend. Yvonne wasn’t particularly convincing, but it wasn’t as though it was fun to feel sorry for herself. Baths in her luxurious Saturne bathroom were much better when they were the relaxing kind, and not when Caro felt like drowning. 

“Get out, get out. I’ll come if you stop singing. Can I borrow your blue dress? The one that wraps like so?“ Yvonne’s closet had always been much nicer than Caro’s own, and she’d managed long ago to convince the other girl to share with her. 

“Oui, oui, if it gets you out of that stupid tub,“ Yvonne replied, already getting up and exiting the room. “Ten minutes, Caro, and I’m coming back in to drag you to Soleil whether you’re dressed or not!“

Caro grinned at the sight of her exiting friend—Yvonne really was the best, even if she invaded Caroline’s room without knocking most of the time. She summoned the towel hanging on the back of the door, and wrapped it around herself as she pulled herself out of the tub. The tub drained quickly, a tiny vortex at the bottom sucking all the water toward the Beauxbatons garden reservoir. 

Her hair was a mess, but she flicked her wand anyways, and watched as a soft yellow light glowed around her head, drying the strands into soft waves. She would leave it down for the night. 

Her room was a mess. Yvonne fondly called her floor “the floordrobe“, because Caro could rarely be fussed to put her things away. She could never decide what to wear, especially when she and Galen were supposed to talk over the mirror. Her housemates had seen her change three or four times before her boyfriend—ex, she thought with a brief pang—and leave all the previous things she’d tried on the floor. 

Yvonne’s blue dress was laid out on her bed, and Caro pulled it over her head gently, careful not to mess up the waves of her hair. She knew she only had a few minutes left, so she looked in the mirror, checked that everything was straightened out and swiped a brief lick of pink lipgloss across her lips. It would have to do—it wouldn’t be as done up as everyone else heading to Soleil tonight, but she didn’t feel like talking much anyway. 

Too many feelings. 

It would be nice to hear Bertie sing though, she allowed. He had a lovely singing voice. 

“Ready, cherie?”

“If you insist,” she said, not bothering to resist when Yvonne looped an arm around her waist, and pulled her toward the door. 

It was barely spring outside—the grass was still tinged with winter brown, but it was warm enough to venture out without warming charms or robes, for which Caro was glad. She tilted her head toward the sky, and took a deep breath in.

“It will smell all of flowers soon,” she murmured, and Yvonne let a shriek of laughter out.

“What?”

“You are such a romantic. Even now, when a boy has left you absolutely heartbroken, you think about flowers and such.”

“Doesn’t the air remind you of flowers?”

“Sure, but I’d never say something so romantic out loud,“ her friend laughed, and dragged her further along the path. They were almost at the Soleil manor—Saturne was the furthest from the party house, but nothing on Beauxbatons campus was a particularly far walk away. 

They were early—Yvonne had this thing about getting to parties early, and making sure they situated themselves in the most socially optimal place. Caro didn’t care as much, but Yvonne had been particularly scarred when Ben Caillebotte has trapped her in a corner talking about instant run-voting systems for an hour because they’d arrived late and didn’t manage to extricate themselves from the lobby. 

Emmanuel opened the door with a wide grin.

“My two favourite girls,” he said, opening his arms for a hug, and Caro leaned in. Em was probably the friendliest person on campus, and she was infinitely glad that he and Yvonne had pulled their asses out of their heads and finally decided to get together. 

He pulled back, dropped a kiss to her forehead and looked her in the eyes.

“Do you want me to beat him up? Yve told me how he sent a letter, le foutu. You deserve better than a letter,” he said, eyes fuming even as his hands snaked around Yvonne's waist. 

She shook her head.

“No. Let him be.”

He shrugged. “You tell me, cherie.”

Caro smiled at him and passed through the entryway, not bothering to deposit her shoes by the door. Usually she would, but it was a party night, which meant the floors would have been charmed to repel spills and dirt. Safer to keep them on her feet. 

She knew if she turned around, she would be greeted by the sight of Em and Yve each trying to take the other’s lips off with vigorous kissing, so she retreated into the house, wandering into the kitchen. The boys would have set the bar up already—it was always the first thing done, because what fun was setting up a party if they couldn’t drink while doing it? 

Nobody else was around, so she hopped up on a rickety bar stool and poured herself a drink. A splash of saint germain, a little bit of tonic, some gin. She conjured a flower to hang off the side of the glass, and with a brief after thought, conjured a second one and placed it in her hair. 

She really did love springtime. 


	2. to sleep, perchance to dream

She was walking again, the gentle night wind floating up the hem of her dress. Ever since Galen unceremoniously dumped her by owl, she hadn’t slept well—too awake for the night, she wandered campus like a withering ghost, waiting for the sun to rise. 

Like Persephone from the deep, she would bloom with the sun—or perhaps just struggle to stay wide-eyed through this last semester of classes. Caro Campion would never before have said she was a quitter, but as she faced down these last few weeks of the term, she could barely bring herself to enjoy it.

It should have been sweet, the thrill of finally finishing their studies here, and moving in with the rest of their lives. Emmanuel had proposed to Yvonne at Christmas, and her friend now doodled wedding plans alongside her ASPIC exam notes—Em would play for les Guivres de Gaul beginning in July, and Yvonne would start putting together their house, before they married in the fall. 

Caro was pleased to help, but she barely tried to curb the jealousy that bloomed in her chest whenever Emmanuel did something sweet for Yve. She could have planned her own wedding alongside her friend, if everything had gone according to plan, and as she wandered the grounds further and further away from the centre of campus, she tried to force away the thoughts of what might have been.

She walked into a gentle mist of water, and blinked in surprise as she looked up. The Neptune fountain stood before her, in all its strange grandeur. She tilted her face toward the most, letting droplets speckle her cheeks, before wandering toward the bench nearby. 

_Quand nous chaterons les temps des cerises..._   
_(When we sing of the time of cherries…)_

A faint strumming of a music filtered through her thoughts, pulling her out drifting thoughts, and to the open window on the topmost floor of the Neptune house. She recognized the voice right away, of course—Bertie Cartier has grown into a kind face, losing most of his boyish look over the past summer. Caro remembered that he had never been much of a flirt, but the Beauxbatons rumour mill had indicated that he and Francine Seguin has been going steady for the entire year.

"It's very beautiful," she said, more to herself than anyone else, but when she looked up, a face was peering at her from the window. 

"Caro! What are you doing here? It’s five in the morning!"

"I couldn’t sleep," she shrugged, looking up at his body, now half hanging out his window. 

"Come up! You’ll get wet if you stay sitting there."

"Oh, I don’t want to disturb you. Don’t you need to sleep?"

"Now is the only time I can practice without annoying everyone else," he said, strumming a few bars again as he spoke. She wanted to lean into the sound, close her eyes again and let it lull her to somewhere else. 

She had walked closer and closer to the house while they spoke, until she was just beneath his window, nearly pressed up against the wall of le maison Neptune, and finally, she gave in.

"I’ll stop yelling at you then," she murmured with a smile, and looked toward the door.

The door clicked open easily, and she found herself in the still and steady foyer of the Neptune house. She has never had reason to visit, not in all of her seven years at Beauxbatons, and she marvelled at how truly they took their theme to heart. 

Living portraits of mermaids covered the walls, all painted soft blue, sunlight bouncing off the pale ash floors. She left her shoes at the door, and in her quiet sock-covered feet, found the staircase toward the top. 

Three floors, if she had counted the windows properly, and she let the wooden railing guide her up. There was no noise save for the gentle crash of waves coming from the portraits, and she averted her eyes from looking at any of the merpeople. 

As she topped the staircase, a slight creak caught her attention, and she smiled as Bertie motioned her toward his room.

“I was just walking, you know.”

“And did I interrupt your walk?” Her smirked though, and Caro felt cheeks heat before shaking her head.

“No. It was mostly just to clear my head, but I always think about the same things.”

She took a seat on the wooden desk chair across from his bed, and watched as he settled himself atop the covers. His sheets were a rumpled mess, but they looked soft as silk, and Caro almost reached out to touch them, before remembering herself. 

“And what things are those?”

His question caught her off guard, and she nearly didn’t answer. Her mouth opened though, and her tongue seemed to follow without much thought.

“Galen, mostly. It’s been a year, but he left so suddenly—with no explanations other than him saying he wanted something else. I had thought—had hoped that he would be the Edmund to my Haidee, but it was not to be.”

“The Tristan to your Isolde, perhaps? Or the Dante to your Beatrice,” Bertie murmured, a gentle smile on his face. “Hopefully not the Charles to your Emma, or the Marius to your Eponine,” he said. 

“You’re making fun,” she pouted, though when he said it like that, she did think it sounded foolish. “It’s just—you know Yve, and Emmanuel—“ 

“Ah, who doesn’t? Beauxbatons’ golden couple. No school can go without,” he teased.

“They’re my friends, you know. Yve is my closest friend,” she said. 

“Yes—yes I’m sorry, go on.”

“They’re getting married in the fall—and we had always thought we would plan our weddings together. Raise children together, do the whole of it like so,” she said, holding up her fingers in a knot. 

Emmanuel and Galen had never gotten along so well, but her and Yve—they would have brought their two little families together, and built something of a home without the stuffy feeling her parents had created growing up. They would have built homes together, side by side in the country—close enough to Paris to see friends, but not so close that Emmanuel couldn’t teach their kids how to fly. 

“Sounds like you had it all planned out. And this Galen—that what he wanted too?”

Bertie strummed again, a soft and melodious chord that stayed in the room for a moment.

“I thought so. But evidently not,” she said, playing with the ring on her right hand. She had imagined that it would move to her left by now, her grandmother’s tiny cluster of pearls and diamonds a symbol of her grandparents’ everlasting love. 

Quiet lingered between them, before she looked up from her hands and found him staring at her.

“What about you?” Caro blurted it out, a question she never meant to ask. 

“Me? What about me?”

“Aren’t you seeing Francine Seguin? Do you ever dream about a future together?”

Bertie played three notes in a row, a minor chord that built up but did not complete, and she felt it linger in the air like the question she had just posed.

“No. Franny and I are just friends, anyway. She won’t marry me, not even if I wanted to,” he smirked. “It isn’t my secret to tell, but she won’t mind—if it helps me any,” he said, and Caro didn’t follow.

“What do you mean?”

“What part of it? That Franny and I aren’t dating? She holds my hand because she likes to tease, and I fiddle with anything if I don’t hold on to something, but I’m not Franny’s type.” He looked her up and down, and raised an eyebrow. “You might be, though, if you’re interested—“

Caro blushes with understanding—and still confusion. “Why do you...let the whole school think...”

He played again, a short minor scale ending on the octave, and shrugged.

“I’m in no hurry to marry. Love will strike when it’s ready,” he said, looking down at his instrument. “And Franny’s not quite ready for everyone to know. I’ll tell her I told you, and besides, we’ve been friends for years. Since we were in diapers. If I was going to date anyone—well, it might as well be her, but she won’t have me!”

He laughed, and Caro smiled too. She still didn’t entirely understand (Yve’s comments a year ago about sapphic lesbians crossed her mind briefly, and she wondered just how many there were who still didn’t feel comfortable to be who they truly were) but she let it go. 

“No marriage then. But surely you—“

Caro didn’t know how to describe the longing she felt, for someone to tilt her chin up, and brush their lips against hers. Galen’s lips had always been rough, dry because he never drank enough water, but that feeling—the unfurling warmth in her belly that spread throughout her entire being—nothing else had ever quite felt the same. 

“Affection,” she settled on a word that didn’t sound too out of place. “From others,” she clarified, as though he could have possibly interpreted it as affection not from others. (What other kind was there? Caro mentally slapped herself for sounding foolish, as though this whole thing hadn’t already made her look like one.) 

“Ah,” Bertie’s eyes brightened. “You mean—“ 

He played a string of notes quickly, louder than before, and then placed the banjo against the wall and leaned forward, taking one of her hands. “Like this?” He turned her palm up, and brushed a thumb over her wrist, before leaning forward to kiss her wrist. 

Caro jumped nearly a foot in the air, pulling her arm away from him. It had been almost frighteningly soft, Bertie’s lips against her skin. He didn’t let go though, and her fingers remained caught by his palm. 

He had rough hands—she could feel the finger calluses against the soft of her palm, but it wasn’t unpleasant. He tugged gently, as though she were a thread he could reel in, and she stood and went in his direction. 

As though captivated by a hypnotist, she sat on those beautifully soft sheets, and let herself go where he pulled, closer and closer until their knees touched together.

_« Il y a pas d’autres qui son plus belles que toi. »_

She was certain she was red as a rose, but she didn’t say anything, 

"I’m going to kiss you now," he murmured, cupping her face with those same calloused hands. "You must tell me no, if you don’t want my kisses."

An hour ago, she would not have dreamed of this situation, and she felt stilted in what to say. Did she want? Caro stilled for a moment, before she leaned forward and kissed him first. "Sorry. I’m impatient," she smiled against his lips, before tilting her face towards his again. 

Bertie laughed, and wrapped one arm around her waist, leaning them both onto the bed until they lay flat beside one another, he brushed a thumb over her cheek, hungrily kissing her lips until she thought she might explode from the sensation. This was it—that feeling, that brief but all-consuming thing that had left her wanting nearly a year ago. 

She reached for one of his hands, lacing her fingers with his. "This is okay?"

"Oh chere, it’s easy. If you like this, I like this too. I have liked you for the past year, but you’ve never looked in my direction." The guitar was beside them now, and she adjusted herself so she didn't crush the strings as he pulled her close. 

"That can't be true—I thought for sure... the time you were playing in Soleil... I had embarrassed myself so much."

"It isn't important. I can do this now," he said, and she felt her face go red. 

He leaned in to kiss her once more, and they stayed like that, lips and limbs and lives tangled together until the mid-afternoon. Sometime in the morning, Francine knocked at his door and opened it to find the two of them asleep, and smiled as she shut it and tapped the lock with her wand. 

Charms could wait. They had charmed one another. 


	3. give me somebody to break my heart

“Caro, ma belle, you’re being silly.”

“B, what am I being silly about? What part of it—with you here at Beauxbatons and me at Sorbonne is not...hard?”

She was frustrated to the point of pulling out her hair. She didn’t want to break up—who wanted to break up with anyone? But she couldn’t see how they could go whole months without seeing each other.

“I’ll sneak out on weekends, come and visit you in Paris. What’s Madame Marceau going to do? Expel me? She’d sooner throw a genuine Cartier jewel into the drain of the Neptune fountain,” he smiled at her, that half-cocked smile of a boy who knew he could get away with perhaps stealing even literal diamonds. 

But that didn’t change the fact that Beauxbatons students were only supposed to leave the grounds on designated weekends and holidays, and Caro was due to graduate in three weeks time. They would have the whole summer, but come September, she and Bertie would be relying on those British prank mirrors and the generosity of the French calendar for moments alone. Wouldn’t it only be fair, to free him of obligations to a girlfriend he would never get to see?

Still, imagining him walking by the Pluto orchards at dawn with anyone else sent a sharp, stabbing pain to her metaphorical heart, and she half-wondered if she might not be selfish for once.

“And this isn’t you, off to the great université, wishing to be free for little ole me?” She could hear the hurt in his voice, and she reached out for his hand before he finished speaking. 

“Never,” she swore. “I love you, and you are the only one my soul desires,” she said, with all the gravity she could muster. Bertie was certainly all that she’d ever imagined in the past year, and though Galen’s breakup with her had been unexpected, Bertie had been a diamond in the rough of her seventh year. It was hard to believe that it had just been a year, when the whole of it seemed intertwined with this growing love between them.

“Fine,” she murmured, half to herself and half to him. “We won’t break up. But I’m going to owl-order two of those mirrors, and I hope you don’t mind, but you’re going to be that weirdo that’s always talking to his girlfriend because she misses you—“ Bertie interrupted her with a laugh and a kiss.

“I knew you would come around, my sweet Caro,” he kissed her again. “I wasn’t quite ready to give this up yet.”

He cupped a hand to her cheek, and pulled her in for a deep kiss. Caro could feel his lips curl into a roguish smile as he ran his tongue along her bottom lip, before nibbling her mouth open. Their kiss would get needier, more frantic in a moment, and Caro let herself succumb to his touch—but instead, he pulled away.

They were sitting on the bench outside Neptune, just far enough from the spray of the fountain where they had first—was conversed the right word? Bertie has nearly fallen out his window, she learned later, trying to get far out enough to attract her attention. He had seen her walking up the path from his window, and picked up his guitar in hopes of making her look up. Caro glanced up to the window of his room—they’d spent many hours there, she thought, a smile rising to her face. More than the professors would have liked, no doubt, but she hadn’t let any of her studies slide in the face of this new love, and more than half the hours had been innocent ones. Bertie practicing his music while she made flash cards for the ASPIC examinations or sitting back to back for hours as they practiced transfiguration on his collection of rocks. 

When she glanced back at Bertie, her eyes questioning why he had pulled away, she gasped in shock.

Down on one knee, Bertie was holding out a glittering diamond.

“Caro, my sweet. I know not ten minutes ago, you were trying to break up with me, but I was hoping you might change your mind. This is rough, not yet polished, not yet set—but you deserve the time, the care and affection it will take to turn this rock into something worthwhile of you. I still have a year left here, and true, I will be lonely when I wander the grounds without you—but I’d do it every day for a year, if it means I’ll get to spend the rest of my life with you.”

Her cheeks were wet, and she half-sought to blame the fountain—if they hadn’t been just out of its reach.

“Yes,” she murmured, but Bertie smiled and shook his head.

“I haven’t even asked yet, cherie,” he said as he took her hand, folding the diamond in her palm. “If you agree, I will spend the next year learning from my father, from the illustrious Cartier grimoire, in order to make you a ring worthy of how lovely you are.” He took a deep breath, and Caro thought that moment would last forever—she would remember it forever, that shining look in his eyes as he gazed at her with wonderment. 

“Will you marry me, Caroline Campion? You are more beautiful than any song, and polished jewel this earth could offer, and I love you like a sweet melody needs harmony—we are matched, my Caro—“ and she cut him off with a kiss and wrapped her arms around him, both of them on the ground now.

“Yes, yes, yes, silly boy. Of course I’ll marry you,” she said, kissing him all over his face. 

She gripped the diamond right in the palm of her hand, careful not to cut herself with it. Bertie wasn’t kidding when he said it was rough, but she had no doubt—by the time they could be together, it would be set in the most stunning of rings. 

That didn’t matter though—what mattered was that Bertie actually wanted to be with her, even though they wouldn’t see each other much until he graduated and could join her in Paris. Still, she would wait. She would be happy to wait, because this—she thought to herself as she kissed him once more—this was worth waiting for. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> na na na this is my tiny soft french babies who are entirely too young to get married, but they sort of fell into my lap a few months ago and I've never been able to get them out of my head. 
> 
> very underdeveloped and will probably stay that way but originally inspired by eurydice and orpheus in a very vague "she falls for his music" kind of way and maybe one day I'll write the tragedy part but for now it's just soft.


End file.
